


loneliness, loneliness (is such a waste of time)

by summerhall



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: F/M, and also eat a lot, in which bucky and kate have west coast adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1253707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerhall/pseuds/summerhall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Kate will look at him, sitting on not-her-sofa, with not-her-cat on his shoulders and not-her-dog at his feet, as he flips aimlessly through the channels and threatens to throw a knife in the TV if it shows him one more infomercial, and she'll remember Eli saying <i>He is way too old for you</i> and she'll laugh.</p><p>If they could see her now. She doesn't think Captain America would approve. (She's right.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	loneliness, loneliness (is such a waste of time)

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place: for Bucky: post Winter Soldier #19, pre- Secret Avengers V2 #9 / for Kate: pre- Hawkeye #18

He looks surprisingly well for a man that's supposed to be dead.

She tells him this. He laughs, and coughs up blood.

And isn't that just her life.

\--------

One of the main reasons Kate's even in LA is because of train-wreck superheroes with fucked up personal lives that she is _so_ not going to get dragged down by. Because wow, she really has no patience for that bullshit. Especially right now when she's in the middle of the "finding herself" stage of crossing over into adulthood.

So when Bucky Barnes washes up (liter-fucking-ly _washes up_ , like some broken Disney prince with a gun fetish) on the beach outside her trailer, Kate realizes that The Universe hates her.

The smart thing for her to do would be to leave him there and wait for whatever ex-fil team he's probably already called to come pick him up. The smart thing for her to do would be to leave him there, even if he didn't have any backup, because helping him would mean getting _involved_ , and at no point in that man's life have things ever not been complicated for him. Which, again, she doesn't need. She has a one-eyed dog and a picky cat to feed, for God's sake.

But he just looks so pathetic lying there with that little bit of sea weed on his metal arm, and even from here she can see that he needs a haircut and at least three good meals. So she goes outside, drags him across the beach and into the trailer, and hopes he likes dollar-store ramen.

\--------

Turns out he doesn't have an ex-fil team, or any kind of backup. He also doesn't have anywhere more important to be, apparently. So he stays. Overnight ("just until my ribs heal up") turns into three days, turns into a week, turns into two, and suddenly he's buying groceries with her and scoffing at the price of cat food.

("When I was a kid, we just fed 'em table scraps." He says. "When you were a kid, the New Deal was still new." She replies.)

He sleeps on the too-small sofa with the cat lying on his chest, when he sleeps there at all. Most nights he leaves out after she's gone to bed, like he thinks she won't know. She does though, and he knows she knows, but they never talk about where he goes or what he does. She's usually doing yoga on the roof of the trailer when he comes back in the mornings with bruises and bloody knuckles. She'll pull her mat to one side and he'll climb up and start cleaning his weapons on the other side. Lucky will play in the sand below them and the sun will rise above them, and it's comfortable.

\--------

He doesn't help her with her jobs because those are _her_ thing. She has to do them on her own, without a team or a partner, and he understands that. It doesn't mean he doesn't laugh at some of the e-mails she gets, though.

("Missing prized cat?" He reads over her shoulder one morning as he's frying bacon. He's wearing one of the old ladies' floral-printed apron over a pair of black sweatpants and t-shirt as he cooks, and he just looks too ridiculous for Kate to not smile every time she looks up. "What are you, the pet detective?"

"If it pays." She shrugs. "Were you expecting me to get e-mails about super-secret AIM bases or a pack of Skrulls posing as a PTA or something?"

He shrugs with his whole arm, spatula still in hand, slinging bacon grease across the linoleum counter top. "No, but you'd think there'd be something more important than award-winning cats."

She feigns offense. "Cats are important."

He looks dubiously over at Mr. Starshadows giving himself a bath on top of the television and wipes the grease off the counter.)

\--------

He leaves one night and doesn't come back in the morning. If asked, Kate would never admit to staying out on the roof an extra hour after sunrise, her yoga mat pointed away from the beach and towards the road. When she climbs down, she thinks ' _A goodbye would have been nice_ ' and then heads for the shower. She's got a borderline legitimate case tracking down a hit-and-run driver that she's been working on for two days now, and she's wasted enough time already.

When she gets home that night, minus a half-dozen arrows and plus a few good bruises, he's sitting on the sofa with a half-eaten cheeseburger plate in his lap and the cat on his shoulders. _You got home late_ is on her tongue, but she catches herself at the last second, because this isn't his home (or her's, really) and they don't owe each other anything.

Instead, she picks up the takeout plate he's left for her on the table and collapses next to him on the sofa. They watch a Yankees game on TV, sneak Lucky french fries, and don't talk about their day.

\--------

They get ice cream from a vendor in the park on the last day of summer. She splits hers with Lucky, picking out all the chocolate chips before she feeds it to him because she read somewhere that dogs eating chocolate was capital-b Bad.

Bucky snorts. "Used to, dogs could eat anything. When I was a kid, we-"

Kate shoves a spoonful of mint choc in his mouth to shut him up.

\--------

She tells him about Clint. About his shit and his building and his bros. She's worried though, and even though he can tell that, he asks anyway. She nearly says _Clint's a big boy, he can take care of himself_ , but she doesn't because the whole point is that he kind of can't right now. So instead she scratches Lucky's ear and says _I'm sure he's fine_ and hopes it's true.

He tells her about Natasha. She tells him that, while it astronomically sucked, what he did was stupid and completely unfair to her, and he gets pissed and walks out.

When he comes back three hours later with apology take-out she merely raises an eyebrow. "Did you think I would lie to you? I mean, you've made me bacon and brought me Chinese, we're practically bonded for life here."

He grins, and they laugh as they fight over eggrolls with their chopsticks, but they don't talk about who they've left behind again.

\--------

She has nightmares. He does too.

He doesn't tell her how many nights her screams wake him, how many times he's nearly broken down the thin bedroom door, gun and knife in hand, when he realizes that her screams are a name.

She doesn't tell him how many nights she lies awake, listening to him toss and turn and breathe in the next room. When he gives up on sleep entirely and flips on the TV, quickly turning the volume on low, is when she finally closes her eyes.

In the mornings, she'll make coffee while he fries eggs, and they'll both pretend like they don't notice the dark bags under each other's eyes.

It's just another thing they don't talk about.

\--------

Sometimes she sits on the beach at night and watches the waves. She enjoys looking at the ocean more than she thought she would, enjoys watching the water wash over the shore and wipe clean whatever was there before. She likes to cheer for the waves when they come in, to try and will them to creep _just a little farther_ up the beach, to clean away just a little more of the sand. It never reaches as far as she wants it to, never sweeps over and washes away the parts she wants.

Sometimes he comes out and sits down in the sand next to her. He'll watch the waves with her, and then it's not so bad when the parts she wants don't get washed away.

 _I'm from New York. What the fuck do I know about ocean metaphors anyway?_ She thinks, and rests her head on his shoulder.

\--------

"Why are you still here?" Kate asks one morning, after she's finished her yoga and he's finished cleaning his guns and they're just sitting on top of the trailer watching the world go by.

He takes a minute to think about it. "Don't really have anywhere else to go." It's not true and she tells him so. He smiles at her then, softly and mostly with his eyes. "Don't really have anywhere else I want to go." It's not true either, but they don't talk about that, so she smiles back.

\--------

"Okay," she says, when he stumbles in one morning with two slugs in his side and half-delirious from blood loss. "This looks bad."

She manages to put some towels down before lying him on the bed. He doesn't put up a fight when she pulls out the bullets and stitches him up, and _that_ worries her more than the holes in his side. She gives him what pain meds they have and watches him sleep for nineteen hours before passing out on the bed next to him.

He's awake the next morning when she opens her eyes. He's grabbed her hand at one point in the night and entwined their fingers. "I would say something about it taking me getting shot twice for you to let me in your bed, but you'd probably beat me with an arrow or something, and I'm already injured."

She smiles despite herself. "Mmhmm. It's a good thing you wouldn't say something like that, then."

Bucky runs his thumb over the callouses on her fingers and smiles.

\--------

Madame Masque catches up with Kate eventually (not that there had ever been much of a chase to begin with) but she doesn't account for the Winter Soldier being Kate's backup. Between the two of them, they turn things around, and the hunter becomes the hunted.

The two old ladies come back to LA at the perfect time, so Kate and Bucky bid goodbye to Mr. Starshadows and Marcus and Finch, pack up Lucky and what few things they had (she should probably be more worried than she is that it's _they_ now) and chase Whitney Frost up the west coast.

They just miss her in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Seaside, and Palo Alto. They catch up with her in San Francisco, but let her go after messing with her a bit, because Bucky has a twisted sense of humor that Kate can totally get behind.

They know Whitney's headed for Portland and then Seattle, so they take their time making their way north, taking turns driving the rented car up 101. Kate's in charge of the radio, completely and totally, because Bucky's taste in music is laughable at best, and ridiculous at worst. He doesn't seem to mind though, because every now and then she'll catch him smiling at her out of the corner of her eye.

They stop at a half-decent Best Western in Eureka, because Bucky actually has money. They order pizza at 2 am, and don't leave the room for three days.

(Kate does stick her head out the door once, but only to apologize to the hotel manager and the two policemen standing behind her that had been called in due to the "excessive and obscene noise".)

\--------

(She tries not to get too attached, she really does, but Bucky's metal arm, warmed by body heat, pressing against her back as they sleep, is quickly becoming her new favorite thing.)

\--------

Steve meets them at a diner in Portland, and, even though he never says anything, Kate can tell by the purse of his lips and the way his brow creases as he stares at them over the rim of his coffee mug that he doesn't approve. She tells herself it doesn't matter, that it's her life and she can fuck who she wants, and that she's never needed his approval, but it still stings.

(Bucky notices, of course, because it got to him too. Later, when he's got the car pointed north and she's staring at the blurs out the window, he says to not worry about what Steve thinks. "He just...he thinks you're too young."

She scoffs and tilts her head back. "Captain America thinks I'm too young. That's a shocker." She huffs out a laugh. "Story of my life."

Bucky sighs and it almost sounds like he's laughing too. "Yeah. I know the feeling.")

\--------

They follow Whitney into a Super Secret and Super Evil Meeting/Auction in Seattle that is freakishly similar to the one in Madripoor that had started all of this mess. (Bucky laughs all the way through Oregon when she finally tells him why Madame Masque is so pissed with her.) They go incognito to sneak in and Kate spends much of the pre-auction cocktail hour whispering in his ear what an awful blonde he makes. Even though he's supposed to be a very serious, very important drug dealer (cheesy _Miami Vice_ white suit and all) he still grins into his bourbon every time she says so.

(He turns it around on her by whispering completely filthy things in her ear that she promises to hold him to when they get out of there.)

They get made half way through the auction. Meta-crime cannon fodder chase them through the hotel, Bucky gets entirely too gleeful using Hydra agents as target practice, AIM scientist-soldiers take far too many arrows to the knees, and, at one point, Kate rips the blonde wig from Bucky's head and throws it in the face of a Hand assassin.

Somehow, in all that, Whitney ends up wrapped in a net arrow and hanging from the flagpole outside. Bucky makes himself scarce and heads back to their hotel when Kate calls in SHIELD to take her away, Whitney screaming about cigarettes and little girls and their fucking psycho assassin boyfriends the whole time.

Fury Jr. raises an eyebrow at that, but Kate just makes the universally acknowledged hand gesture for She's Fucking Cray-cray, Man by twirling her finger near her head and whistling. He doesn't ask any more questions.

\--------

Clint calls two weeks after that. She goes into the bathroom to talk, because Bucky's still asleep and hearing Clint's voice after so long is choking her up in ways she wasn't expecting and isn't comfortable with anyone seeing.

He tells her everything- about his brother and the tracksuits, Simone and the kids, the Clown and the hearing loss. Kate sits on the edge of the tub and listens to him brag about the new hearing aides Tony and Hank made for him and does everything she can not to cry.

"How you doin', Katie?" He asks, and she takes a moment to make sure her voice is level before answering. She tells him about LA and working odd hero jobs, about being broke and living in someone else's trailer, about the cat food and the Cat Food Man. She tells him about Lucky's first encounter with the beach and listens to the grin in his voice when he replies that she better have made pictures. She never mentions Madame Masque. Or Bucky.

He asks her where she's going, and she tells him she doesn't know- and then realizes that she truly doesn't. He beats around the bush about it, but eventually asks if she ever plans on coming home. He seems to have his shit together now- at least, as much as he ever will- so she promises she'll bring the dog back soon. As for anything else, she can't say.

Bucky's awake when she leaves the bathroom, his phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear as he stands and tugs on his underwear. She sits down on the edge of the bed and listens as he gives curt, one-word replies to the person on the other end before hanging up.

He flops down beside her with a sigh. "Fury's got a job for me."

Fury's had jobs for him before, but she can tell by his tone that this one's different. She's known all along that this was coming, has never kidded herself about the nature of their relationship, but there's a lump in her throat that she hadn't expected would be there. She swallows it down. "When are you leaving?"

"Tonight. He's got me on the nine o'clock out of Sea-Tac."

Kate glances at the bedside clock. 10:32 am. She runs her hands over the tops of her thighs and wishes she'd shaved while she was in the bathroom. "So, you wanna get something to eat?"

"Yeah." He says, and wags his eyebrows.

"You're such a dork." But she lets him pull her back into bed anyway.

\--------

They stay parked in the airport drop-off lane, leaning against the car and smiling stupidly at each other, for much longer than is socially acceptable. (The driver in the cab behind them starts yelling five minutes in, but Bucky glares at him in way that she probably should find scary, but mostly just thinks is weirdly adorable.)

And then, because Bucky Barnes is a wonderful human being, he says: "I'll never be sorry."

Kate throws her head back and laughs. "Neither will I. And I'll never be sorry I made you watch that movie."

She stands on her toes and lightly runs her nails over the stubble on his cheek before kissing him one last time. He wraps his arms around her and smiles into her hair. "See you around, Kate."

"You better." She punches him in the arm as he pulls away and heads for the door. "Try not to get killed again, okay?"

He winks at her over his shoulder as he walks away. "I don't make promises I can't keep."

\--------

Thirty minutes later, Kate's sitting in a gas station parking lot, studying the free road map she'd picked up inside while she waits for her 49-cent cappuccino to cool. She thinks of heading back to LA, or going even farther down into Mexico. She toys briefly with the idea of setting up shop in St. Louis, because really, how many superheroes are in the mid-west?

Lucky sits up from the backseat and licks her cheek. "What do you think about that, boy? Hawkeye, leader of the Missouri Avengers, team of one." He tilts his head and she laughs. "Yeah, my thoughts exactly."

She puts the keys into the ignition and points the car east. "Let's go home, Lucky."

\--------

Little over a year after Seattle, Bucky Barnes officially comes back from the dead. Again.

Tony insists on a party, and no one argues. The call goes out and they assemble in Avengers Tower, everyone relieved that, for the first time in a long time, they're celebrating instead of mourning.

She and Wanda are standing guard over the spiked punch bowl, making sure Tommy doesn't get in it (not that they'd ever catch him if he tried), when she looks up and meets his eyes across the room.

Bucky smiles. So does Kate.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a drabble, completely got away from me, and turned itself into a monster. (I honestly don't know what happened.) Also, never write when you're hungry. You end up with fics like this where all they do is eat.
> 
> Title from Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me".


End file.
